


Snap, Crackle, Pop

by blcwriter



Series: Eyes are Still Brightest 'Verse [2]
Category: Star Trek RPF
Genre: Angst, M/M, Originally Posted on LiveJournal, fic import
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-15
Updated: 2013-12-15
Packaged: 2018-01-04 18:17:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1084158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blcwriter/pseuds/blcwriter





	Snap, Crackle, Pop

  
This story started with [Eyes Are Still Brightest](http://blcwriter.livejournal.com/47698.html#cutid1), then continued with [Happily Blinded](http://blcwriter.livejournal.com/49604.html#cutid1). And now we go a bit back in time, to a less happy time for our boys. For [](http://gwynraven.livejournal.com/profile)[**gwynraven**](http://gwynraven.livejournal.com/)  , who wanted to know more about when the opal ring was broken.

There will be a honeymoon fic someday (and yes, [](http://emiliglia.livejournal.com/profile)[**emiliglia**](http://emiliglia.livejournal.com/) , I remember, there are still some parts yet-unattended to with the rings). But for now, Chris wanted a turn with the story.

Rated NC-17 for lots of swearing and angsty mansex. And now that I’ve written it, well, shit, I realize it’s turning itself into a bit of an epic, so anyone else who wants to take a turn at the chapter that sort of begs to follow this one? Go ahead and PM me.

\--

The only light in his apartment was a cigarette ember, glowering as he came in the door. When Chris turned on the light, it was clear Karl’s mood matched the ash burning red.

Karl sat in the exact mathematical middle of Chris’ couch, one arm stretched over the back, one arm resting falsely casual over the knee crossed over his opposite leg.

“You smell like her perfume,” he said, before Chris had even gotten the door all the way closed.

God save him from ridiculous Kiwis. As if his night could be worse than the vapid waste it had already been.

“That’d be what tends to happen when you get pap-stalked and have to kiss someone goodnight at their door,” Chris replied, setting his keys in the bowl. He hung up his jacket, tossed his wallet and phone on top of his keys—noted that none of Karl’s things were there. He didn’t seem to be planning on staying, it seemed—just on picking a fight.

“Tonight’s the third time this week that you’ve seen her,” Karl said, his tone mild and not deceptive at all. He was about to get nasty. “Did you fuck at her place, or just in an alley somewhere?”

It was then that he saw Karl’s duffel bag—the one at the side of the couch, the one that looked stuffed to the brim, like the zipper was ready to pop with one ill-timed jostle.

Something inside Chris didn’t loosen—it snapped.

“Fuck you. Fuck your sanctimony. Fuck your hypocrisy. Fuck your jealousy and your goddamn accusations,” Chris said, his voice rising with each punctuation. “You know how this game is played—or you should. Just because you don’t have to play it—just because you’ve got kids and a _wife_ you still haven’t fucking divorced, so it’s not expected of you, and how’s that for two-faced, you prick? You think I _want_ to be out with some no-brains twit night after night because any time a guy’s single for more than two weeks he’s clearly gagging for cock and that’s a bad thing?”

“Leave my family out of it,” Karl growled, popping up from the couch like he’d been ejected, just like Chris knew he would. Knee-jerk. Mention the kids and Karl went ballistic.

“Right. Because _your_ family, _your_ life’s private but my public one you can pick at like …” Chris ran out of comparisons as anger subsumed him.  Just because she was his most recent co-star. His public persona, that sham, and how infrequently he was let into Karl’s private one, the few times he’d met Karl’s—awesome—wonderful—really sweet-- kids on their infrequent visits to L.A., that week they’d spent during their stopover when Karl’d bought him that stupid ring his—vapid, fake-titted-- date had admired, running her black-lacquered nails over the silver and opal acquisitively like she had some right to touch Chris—touch Karl’s ring—like this was going some place other than any other P.R. date.

He slammed his fist into the wall in frustration—not coincidentally blocking the way out of his house. For the moment. “Goddamnit, Karl, you’re the one who doesn’t want people to know, I’d go on Oprah tomorrow and fucking jump on her couch, so leave if you want, but don’t make this my fault.”

His fist left a hole, the plaster crackled and dented—and the force of it as Chris pulled his hand free seemed to give Karl some pause as he looked at Chris, eyes widening—shocked. Karl was the shouter—the slammer—the yeller—when the two of them fought. Not Chris. Not before now.

Well. Fuck that.

And fuck Karl. Or not, as the case seemed to be. His hand hurt like a sonofabitch, a dull echo of Karl’s stupid, baseless, bullshit accusations. The ring Karl had given him was cracked all the way through, the silver band warped.

There was that metaphor Chris had been searching for. He yanked the ring off, tossed it onto the floor, never minding the inevitable and dumb—stupid—tears-- said “hunh, fitting, I guess,” and slammed the door in Karl’s face as he headed back out to his car.

Karl could leave or not leave if he wanted. But damned if Chris was going to stand there like a fool and just watch.

\---

At three in the morning, the phone rang next to the bed.

Chris contemplated letting it ring, but he was still awake. How in fuck he was going to sleep…

“What?”

“Mr. Gertraer?” He made some affirmative noise—the desk clerk could pretend like he was mostly asleep if he had to.

“There’s a Mr. Francis Llewellyn* down here, he would like to come up if you’ll allow it.” The man’s voice held an extremely dubious note, as it should, since it was three in the morning and he knew damned well who was standing right there.

Chris heaved a sigh, then contemplated his hand. He’d stopped icing the knuckles an hour ago, and he’d cleaned up the scrapes as best as he could. It wasn’t that bad, just swollen and bloody. Nothing worse than he’d gotten in some of the badly-overseen stunts on some of his very first movies.

“Sir?”

“Fine.” He hung up the phone before he could change his mind, then stared at the door. Karl might be a jealous sonofabitch, but it had only taken him an hour and a half to figure out where he was staying and under what pseudonym once he’d figured out that Chris had turned off his phone and wasn’t holed up with Zach—as if he’d subject Zach to Karl when he was in one of his snits.

He wasn’t that far from the elevator that he missed the soft ding—didn’t miss the heavy tread down the hall—but he was … surprised by the pause and hesitant knock – by the shifting back and forth of the shadowed feet outside the door.

Still, though.

He heaved himself off the bed, padded barefoot to the door, cracked it open enough to ascertain whether Karl’s mood had soured further—simmered—was ready to volcano up at the first word from Chris.

His throbbing hand held the door cracked open enough just to talk—and also to snap it shut in Karl’s face if it got nasty again, because Chris had finally decided despite the ache that had settled in—well, everywhere, if that was how one diagnosed heartbreak, he’d never really done it before—he met Karl’s eyes and waited. He’d said everything he had to say, including his piece about Nat.

Separated, his ass—and allegedly even before Chris came along, not that Chris pried, since he sure as hell felt dirty enough about the whole thing, even if she’d seemed perfectly okay with his meeting the kids and God knew, Chris thought the kids—man, they were awesome. Still-- it was fucking convenient for Karl to never actually come out and say, “hey, I’m no longer fucking my wife” to anyone outside his immediate circle.

“I hate Oprah,” Karl said, his voice tight and expression—something—afraid? “But Ellen’s okay.”

Chris sighed, because fuck, people accused _him_ of being dramatic. “I wasn’t being literal, Jesus Christ, Karl.” What _that_ would do to both their careers. He stepped back and left the door open, then sat on the edge of the bed. Karl came—just barely—inside, keeping the door at his back, like he needed it to lend him some spine.

“I … Chris,” Karl said, “I’m really—I’m sorry, I had no right, and you’re right, and … I should have ended this thing with Nat a while ago, you’re right that I’ve been a damned hypocrite, I forget what it’s like, and…” He paused, looking at Chris while Chris waited.

He wasn’t trying to be mean— but he was tired, this last fight the culmination of a hundred times Chris had bitten his tongue every time Karl had said something possessive or jealous when he had no fucking right—when he had the fallback of family and a solid career when Chris was still trying to build one. Sure, maybe Karl filmed a stinker or two, but scripts showed up for him every week and Chris was still out there fishing for work, pushing and hustling and trying to make a name for himself.

He was tired of being accused of being wrong for trying to live his damned life and love Karl the best that he could—and Karl wouldn’t let him. Or couldn’t. Whatever.

“Look. You’re tired. I’m tired. Everyone’s tired. We’ll talk tomorrow, I promise,” Chris offered, met Karl’s eyes so he’d know Chris was telling the truth. Tomorrow, with some sleep under both of their belts, Chris wouldn’t feel so much like a dead heart in a live body, some husk that kept breathing when the doctors should have just pulled the plug, and Karl, well, maybe he wouldn’t look quite so wild-eyed or afraid in the morning and Chris could think how to deal with this new iteration of Karl, one he’d never seen ever before.

“No, please,” Karl said—pled—and pushed away from the door, reached the bed in two strides because it might be the W but it wasn’t their most deluxe of rooms, he’d only chosen it because it was brand new and so ultra-modern he figured Karl would decide it would be the last place he’d stay. “Don’t make me leave,” he rasped, sinking down until he was kneeling and looking up at Chris, hands on his legs, those broad hands of his digging into Chris’ thighs like he would drown if he had to let go.

“Karl…” He slid back—away-- up the bed, because-- no. “We’ll talk in the morning. I can’t do this tonight.”

Karl—poured was the only adjective, if _up_ was a direction that verb could describe. Chris told his grammarian brain to shut the fuck up as Karl wrapped himself around Chris’body, weighted him into the bed, uttered—half-moaned, even—his protests into the skin of Chris’ stomach, his breath hot and wet as he buried his head against Chris’ belly and chest.

“No, no, no, no, I need you, so fucking much, never wanted anyone so much in my life, Chris, do you know what that’s like? And I know I’m an ass, I’ve got no fucking right, I know that you wouldn’t, I know it, I do, I just, I hate them, I hate it, I don’t know why I just… and why would you stay when you could …”

Karl was literally grinding his head into Chris’ hip—not a pleasure at all, but Chris didn’t think he was aware, not the way the front of his shirt was getting steadily wet. Chris choked because Jesus-- Karl—Karl wasn’t the kind of person who cried, Chris was the asshole who blubbered all the damned time, it was why his publicist thought he was gay in the first fucking place when the truth was Chris still really liked banging chicks, it was just, well—Karl was the exception to just about every damned everything ever.

After five or ten only semi-hysterical minutes, Chris managed to detach himself from a clingy but seemingly all cried-out Karl, and got two washcloths from the bathroom.

“You’re an infant,” he said, handing one over to Karl after blowing his nose with the room-issue Kleenex. Karl choked on a laugh that threatened to turn into tears all over again as Chris quoted Bones back at him, so Chris retrieved the washcloth and took over the job of removing the salt and red traces from Karl’s face.

Karl stilled as Chris worked, as quiet as Indy when Chris tucked him in after he’d fallen asleep when they’d been watching a movie or reading late after dinner. When he finished, he swiped at his own face and tossed the used squares in the bathroom’s general direction, satisfied enough when they landed on the tiles and not on the rug.

The covers had gotten all rucked—the pure white coverlet with its geometric embroidery a bit dirt-streaked from Karl’s boots—but neither much noticed as Chris got them stripped down to boxers and into the sheets, the one bedside light he’d had on now turned off.

Hunter had a stuffed rhino he called Stanhope Woobie the Third. Though he claimed to be “too old for that kind of junk,” Chris would check in on him at night and find Hunter curled over his woobie, the small rhino’s horns tucked under his chin as the boy whuffled the toy like it was the finest perfume in the world—and the position seemed to be one that ran with the Y chromosome in the family, because Chris found himself—almost ferociously, but somehow not quite—grasped and enfolded and whuffled and held with Karl curled all around in the dark as the cars drove up and down Hollywood Boulevard. It was still L.A. outside-- somewhere, out there, someone was putting an act on right now.

“I know what it’s like to want something so much you don’t know who you are or what to do any more,” Chris soughed into the dark, because he was exhausted and damned if he knew what the answer was, even if at least now he’d said it aloud. But he didn’t say the “L” word—if Karl didn’t know that by now, there was even less Chris could do than he had already done, and he already felt totally flayed.

Karl said nothing more, but the ankle hooked over his hitched in a bit tighter, just this bit shy of uncomfortable, and the arms circling him spasmed, fingernails digging in sharply before letting go as if Karl didn’t believe him—or maybe didn’t believe in his luck.

Chris could hope it was the latter. He was too tired to think about more.

\---

Kisses peppered and flickered faster than Chris was coming awake.

Chris hmmmed, his voice rough from sleep. The light was bright enough without cracking an eye, but Karl—Karl was a sight once he’d blinked off the glare from the window. Crouched low and hair completely disheveled, palms braced next to Chris’ upper torso and stomach as he worked on the “ah, fuck,” ticklish part inside Chris’ knee, he didn’t say a damned word as he tasted his way over Chris’ body.

And he accused Chris of having an oral fixation.

The swipes of tongue—latches of mouth, sucking and nips of teeth biting—got longer and hotter and fiercer, and boxers went over the side of the bed as Karl’s sleep-warm skin slid over his, body hair snagging, friction warming them further.

His cock twitched—throbbed—wanted—skin crackled with fire-- mouth watered, too—even though makeup sex before they’d even talked was so not the right thing to do. But Karl’s mouth—Jesus, his tongue—was lapping its way up the inside of Chris’ thigh, circling and suckling Chris’ asshole and “gah, unh”—coherent protests weren’t the first thing on his tongue right about now as Karl’s hands under his thighs pushed up and parted—made room for himself as his hair tickled Chris’ balls and his tongue wormed its way inside of Chris, a slow, unceasing invasion-- as if he didn’t already possess Chris. As if he didn’t already know—but then, that was the whole point of last night, and Chris’ eyes prickled because this wasn’t the last time this would happen, Karl forgetting that Chris was in this for real. If he wasn’t a gentleman, he’d punch Natalie right in the mouth because Karl wouldn't talk about why they were separated at all, but he didn't think it had been Karl's idea in the first place.

Instead, he grabbed Karl’s hair, dug fingers into Karl’s shoulder—got a grunt puffed into his body that made him squirm with _something_ as Karl’s hands under his legs looped and grabbed him, pulled him back as his tongue stabbed and sucked—and he could moan and arch and writhe all he wanted—or didn’t, Chris wasn’t sure of anything at all anymore—but Karl had him pinned and he wasn’t going anywhere until Karl was done doing—whatever it was he needed to do.

Re-claim? Possess? Mark? Cling like he had last night, except even more closely, his tongue laving Chris’ balls as he sucked one, then the other into his mouth, one hand clamped hard on Chris’ cock to keep him from spurting as Chris writhed and Karl just kept dragging it out because he needed—what?

At some point, Karl’s fingers joined his tongue inside Chris’ body, and screw Karl and whatever he thought he could bench press as he made contact with Chris’ prostrate—he arched up and away from Karl’s still-pinning arm, his cock spurting painfully hard through the constriction of Karl’s hand, the hot splashes coming out it in splutters and pops on Chris’ stomach as he let out a harsh, wordless, yell before he crumpled back to the bed, muscles trembling so hard that behind closed eyelids he had fervid visions of oceanic fault lines and subterranean cracks.

_Just like us._

For the second time in not too many hours, Karl pulled him into an almost fetal position, and Chris fought a desire to laugh at the ridiculousness of it all, the two of them on a bed in a luxury hotel in downtown L.A., with the sun already up and the workers at the café across the street already setting out umbrellas and chairs. It was going to be a beautiful day, and when they left the hotel, everyone who looked at either of them would think they could have anything—anyone that they wanted.

Instead—he swallowed the laugh and also swallowed the dumb—stupid—sniffle that wanted to follow. Since Karl couldn’t see his face, he couldn’t see the tears prickling his eyes. Karl’s body behind him was sticky—and now, cooling and tacky-- with sweat. At some point, and at least they had that much going for them, that something about Chris still got Karl off—Karl had come, judging by the cool, slippery mess cupping Chris’ ass as Karl snugged him in closer, pulled up the hand Chris had punched the wall with and held it up to the light.

“I’ll get you a new ring,” he said, his voice husky and raw, and Christ, he still sounded so apologetic, like Chris would kick him out any damned minute.

The fact was that by the time Chris was done icing his hand he knew that come morning he’d be the one calling Karl, telling him he was sorry, even though he’d done nothing wrong. It was just a matter of Karl having come calling that had kept Chris from going back first. Wife or not, divorce or not, whether they sneaked around for the rest of however long it was until Karl got tired and moved on-- the truth was, he didn’t know why Karl had ever looked his way in the first place, and if Karl was going to get jealous and needy and possessive in the meantime until he realized that Chris just wasn’t worth it, well—Chris should be thankful that someone felt like that about him, even if it was temporary.

“It’s okay,” Chris said, pulling their hands down and ignoring Karl’s—and Karl’s wife’s heart tattoo on his ring finger—as best as he could as he kissed the tops of Karl’s knuckles.

“I want to,” Karl answered, his breath raising the hair on the back of Chris’ neck, and his comment meant more than just the fact that his being a jackass last night led Chris to act unlike he normally did.

Chris kissed his knuckles again. “I know. But … don’t, it was a joke anyway and I know you’re not a ring kind of guy.” He pulled Karl’s arms more tightly around him, closed his eyes on his lying tears, and said—thank God for acting and knowing how to keep one’s voice steady—“It’s okay. We’re okay. You don’t need to change anything.”  Whatever kept Karl from feeling so lost.

Karl’s body trembled again and Chris thought of earthquakes before Karl seemed to let all his breath out in a pop. “Okay. Okay,” he said, before he kissed the underside of Chris’ ear. “I love you so much.”

Chris shivered—said “I love you too,” because it was true, nevertheless, and ignored all the tears that slid down the grooves of his nose.

Karl must have had his eyes closed, because he only breathed a sigh of relief, and soon fell into sleep.

Chris stared out the window and watched L.A. wake up.

\----

*Chris’ dad’s character on CHiPs was Sgt. Joseph Getraer, and the character of “Ponch,” played by Erik Estrada, was actually named Francis Llewellyn Poncherello on the show.


End file.
